5 comments:

I have read this several times, and I think it is a beautiful post. Really. :-) However... since I am 100% Opus Dei through and through, I feel the need to criticize it. ;-)

You said "My avatar in Second Life prays and I pray too." Now, I don't exactly understand this. It is above my pay grade, but I'll take a chance. Padre Josemaria said, about riding the trains of his time (the technology of the day): I will that every clickity-clack-turn of the train wheel is a prayer of Thanksgiving.

You say: "I have tried to empty my mind for prayer, but not having that spiritual gift more native to other cultural contexts, I pray instead by filling my mind." This was Merton's problem (i.e. emptying his mind). Josemaria says: The Catholic never has a "Moment of Silence" -- he is always speaking with God.

You say: "I still have no idea what we are doing when we pray...." Jesus does not want us to be in the dark. He gave us the fullness of Truth. It is in the Church. You are a leader. Just look.

While at Warburg Seminary, a professor working within the Lutheran/Catholic dialogue asked us this very same question as he considered an article dealing with the topic of The One Mediator, Mary and the Saints. In response to his inquiry, I received permission to put the question out to the entire email list of my Synod and received some incredible responses. People have such varied experiences with prayer, all deeply personal and sacred, yet most come around to some version of your last two stanzas.

Perhaps I could say that because I am a leader, and because I look, that is precisely why I confess my inability to fully express what it is we are doing when we pray. In the same way that an aspect of speaking of God is kataphatic (we cannot speak of God) so too we can say the same thing of prayer.

I do understand what you are saying, but with the word "kataphatic," it seems to me you are going into the area of mystical prayer. All I am trying to say is that we already have a tremendous amount of teaching and information on prayer left to us by the Saints (and others) over the period of 2000 years... for example, the writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross.

I am somewhat concerned, because instead of turning to what we already have, I see some people going in the direction of The Emerging Church -- looking for something "new." In my view, as best as I can understand it, Emerging Church theology is just re-heated Gnosticism. (But, what do I know?)

I do have a question on prayer... I have searched, but I have not found the answer. In the Lord's Prayer, or the Our Father, Jesus says (English tr.): "Lead us not into temptation." Theologically, I believe, God "leads" no one into temptation.

Well... hahaha... I just did what I have been telling everyone else to do -- I checked the Catechism! (I had just been using a Greek dictionary.) The CCC #2846 says the Greek verb is "difficult to translate," but then gives 2 renderings like the Spanish version. I still don't have an answer to the question of why we have the English translation that we do.